By Quintin Smith on February 15th, 2011 at 9:51 am.
American McGee’s Alice 2, aka Alice: Madness Returns has a new teaser out, which I spotted during my morning patrol of VG24/7. You can watch it below. Hurry! You’re late! You’re late, for a very important date! No time to say hello, good-bye! You’re late, you’re late, you’re late!
That’s what being a freelance journalist is like, you know. All the time.
Did you know the studio working on this (headed by McGee), Spicy Horse Studios, is based out of Shanghai? Did you know they also have a smaller studio working on iPhone games called Spicy Pony Studios? I’m not making this up!
I have quite fond memories of the original Alice. The terror of swimming away from bus-sized trout, some fun platforming, lots of surprises, and the motherloving blunderbuss! Did you guys find that? If memory serves if was off the beaten track so you might not have, but it was the only actual gun in the game and all you had to do was point it half-heartedly in the direction of an enemy and when you pulled the trigger /everything/ on-screen died. It was a thing of beauty.
+1 for the Tom Waits reference.
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I must be insane,
To go skating on your name,
And by tracing it twice,
I fell through the ice,
Of Alice.
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+2 you are a man of good taste.
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+3, thanks for pressing the “play” button in my brain.
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+4
…and that’s my early morning listening squared away then.
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Welp, time to put on Alice again. There are worse fates.
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+5 and bonus virtual candy! :p
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This looks awesome, never played the original due to being young and ignorant of it’s existence at the time, and sadly it’s not available anywhere these days :’(
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Here in the states you can get a pretty cheap disc on ebay or amazon… I’ve seen them for $10 or so. If you want the whole box and such though it is of course more expensive.
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I like the overall look, but I’m not too keen on Alice herself. I felt that the first game got her right in that she didn’t completely lose the cutesy thing, and that tension (cutesy vs. dark) was pretty nifty. This Alice is completely dark, she’s one with the world, and she’s got this weird anime thing going that I find prettyoverdone.
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Aye, the original made her more of a character in her own right than this teaser suggests.
Haven’t all of McGee’s games sucked since Alice? I can’t remember any of them and when I try to then the part of my brain that protects me from humming old pop songs tells me not to bother.
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The strange thing is that they can’t seem to decide if Alice is young or old. Her body and face just don’t match. Her face looks much too old.
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When will there be an American McGee’s Paddington Bear game?
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@skurmedel
When there is, it will presumably be set in Deepest Darkest Peru.
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I loved American McGee’s version of the Mad Hatter. Always struck me as a pretty amazing rendition.
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2011: The Year videogame characters tried to look serious whilst blood hilariously trickles down the bridge of their nose.
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Pretty sure that’s been every second of every year since 1981.
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When is a croquet mallet like a billy club?
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I’ll tell you. Whenever you want it to be.
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I’ve still heard nothing about the most important part of the game:
Is the original Cheshire Cat still in it?
“Those who say there’s nothing like a nice cup of tea for calming the nerves never had real tea. It’s like a syringe of adrenaline straight to the heart.”
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And if not, there may be more then one way to skin a cat… if you’ll pardon the expression.
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They’ve moved the county boundaries, he’s now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat.
(thanks Jasper Fforde)
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The environment looks to be inspired by the Timothy Burton movie.
Smells like teen angst.
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American McGee’s Alice came out in 2000, so if anything I’d say ol’ Timmy was influenced by the game. I thought I’d read something somewhere saying that the newest Alice in Wonderland movie was based on that game, but I may be making things up now.
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The game was licensed for a movie at some point, but that was long long ago. The movie seems to be based more on a hybrid of Lord of the Rings, neat concept art, cliched ideas and, well, really (REALLY) bad film-making. Tim Burton was a hero of mine since I was a pre-goth pre-teen, but he’s gotten really dull of late.
The game itself looks very much in line with the previous one…gothy surrealism ftw!
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It actually does look a lot more colorful and less surrealist… or, rather, a wildly different kind of surrealism.
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Hopefully this will be better than Bad Day L.A
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Looking forwards to return to this joyfully insane world of killing and jumping. Unless it only has two weapon slots and a cover system. That would be insane indeed.
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Oh look, it’s how Tim Burton should have done it (And probably would have done if Hollywood wasn’t so good damn simple minded).
Shame I didn’t play the first game. When I saw it on the shelves I thought it looks quite…well…disgusting. I thought that it’s somekind of cheap, stupid, bad with cheap, stupid, bad graphics and cheap, stupid, bad, gameplay and a cheap, stupid, bad story…
…oh boy was I wrong.
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